


With or Without Them

by Irmelin



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irmelin/pseuds/Irmelin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lipton tries hard to be the kind of man who tells his wife everything.<br/>Buck lost the photograph of the laughing, happy couple somewhere in a foxhole in Bastogne.<br/>Martin receives the letters from his wife whenever the US Army finds the time and effort to deliver them.<br/>Babe still has the letter from Doris in his backpack.<br/>Harry mails the parachute as soon as they get back to England.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With or Without Them

With or Without Them

i  
Lipton tries hard to be the kind of man who tells his wife everything. He has always prided himself of the fact that he has never lied to her during their marriage.

But that was before. Before he found himself caught up in this never ending war, where the truth is too much like a nightmare to feel true. This he can't tell her, because the thought of her knowing is more painful than anything the war might have in store for him.

So he writes down the lies, one after one, in letter after letter, and prays that she will never know the truth.

 

ii  
Buck lost the photograph of the laughing, happy couple somewhere in a foxhole in Bastogne. Maybe it's still there, buried under the snow, waiting to be revealed in the spring. Maybe it's been blown to pieces by one of the thousands of grenades shattering the forest. He doesn't care.

He doesn't need a picture to remind him of her dark eyes or her beautiful smile, of the way her cheek felt against his. It's etched into his mind, even though he doesn't want to remember any of it. She is not important any more. It's the smiling man beside her on the photograph that he's trying to bring back, trying to reach, trying to remember how to be again. He must be there, somewhere.

But here, in a hospital bed in Bastogne, that man is so far away. The photograph is gone. Just like her. Just like him. Just like everything else.

 

iii  
Martin receives the letters from his wife whenever the US Army finds the time and effort to deliver them. But he knows that she writes them as regularly as clockwork. Every Sunday evening she sits down at the kitchen table with a soon forgotten cup of tea and tells him all about the week that has been. He can see her before his eyes, her dark head bent over a sheet of paper in the fading light of the summer evening.

Sometimes he wonders how much time she spends going through casualty lists, reading all the newspapers she can get her hands on, carefully writing down every name she recognizes, the names he's mentioned in his letters to her. He both longs for and dreads the letters, knowing that he might be have to be the one passing on the news of lost friends and lost brothers.

But it's worth it, just to see his own name in her dear, familiar handwriting. He runs his fingers slowly over her signature and folds every single letter carefully. Then he goes into battle, every second, every day fighting for her, fighting to stay alive so that she'll never have to read his name in one of the too long lists of casualties.

 

iv  
Babe still has the letter from Doris in his backpack. The Dear Babe letter, as Bill called it. He's not quite sure why he's kept it. Every now and then he imagines that her scent lingers there, among the harsh words. But he's fooling himself. He doesn't even remember her fragrance, other than that it was vaguely flowery and far too sweet for his liking. He never told her. He regrets that now. He thinks about writing her.

Dear Doris. Thank you for finishing with me the day before I headed into hell. Things weren't bad enough already. By the way, I hate your perfume. Love, Edward.

She always insisted on calling him Edward, just like the nuns. When he thinks about it, she never did seem to like him very much. Maybe he should have seen it all coming.

He never will write that letter, but the thought of it is comforting. He composes it over and over again in his head, when other thoughts need to be pushed aside.

Every time he looks through his bag for dry socks or his toothbrush, and his fingers brush against her letter, he thinks about throwing it away. But he never does. It's still a little part of home, of his old life, of normality, and as such, it's far too precious to get rid of.

 

v  
Harry mails the parachute as soon as they get back to England. On his first leave he sneaks off to the nearest civilian post office and sends it home. He smiles to himself as he addresses it to Kitty Grogan and tries to imagine the look on her face when she opens it, when she runs her fingers through the smooth silk.

Nixon snorted and rolled his eyes, muttering the same old phrases about how Harry's being a fool for thinking she is still waiting for him when Harry told him where he was going and what he was doing, but Harry refuses to let anyone bring him down. He knows it happens all the time, he has lost count of how many of the men that have received one of the dreaded letters from home. Sometimes he thinks the letters are just a pre-emptive strike, to avoid the fear of one day getting an official telegram in return. But it won't happen to him.

He knows Kitty, and he has never once doubted her. Not since the day he met her.

They were introduced by friends, on a sunny day in September. He saw the spark in her eyes and heard the sound of her voice, made up his mind and told her that he was going to marry her one day. People around them laughed, while Kitty cocked her head to the side and studied him intently for a few long seconds. The she smiled and calmly told him she was looking forward to that day.

That day is nearing. It won't be long now. Harry won't let anything, least of all a petty, little war, stop him.


End file.
